What’d You Do Last Weekend?

Chocolate Shortbread

Sometimes monkeying with a good recipe is courting disaster. What could you possibly do to improve on a good shortbread, for example? Well, with the simple addition of some chopped herbs, you have a magnificent rosemary shortbread. Likewise, a smidgen of cocoa transforms this shortbread into a light, sandy wafer that practically dissolves on the tip of your tongue.

But be warned - these cookies have very little structure and are delicate to handle both raw and baked. The raw dough looks like wet sand, and just like a good dune, these disappear fast.

A few notes about this recipe:

The raw dough has the texture of fine sand, and the baked cookies fall apart like sand too.

I assumed 1 c AP flour = 4.5 oz. I wanted to use a touch more flour in this recipe because some of the other Cookes and Brownies recipe seemed a little short on flour for their fat content. It was a good call. Next time I might assume 5oz.

I used Drost cocoa for these cookies.

I formed these in mini tart pans and chilled the dough in the freezer for an hour before baking. After baking them in the tart pans, I let them cool in them too and they held their shape pretty well.

When baking in mini tart pans, these cookies baked in 35 minutes.

The recipe calls for granulated sugar to be sprinkled on as soon as the cookies come out of the oven, but I found a little salt added to the sugar made the cookies even more cocoa-y.